Geoffrey Batchen SUSPENDING TIME: Life—Photography—Death
Guest curator photography historian Geoffrey Batchen’s Suspending Time: Life—Photography—Death (held at the Izu Photo Museum from April 3rd to August 20th, 2010) is the first decisive investigation in Japan of everyday photographs otherwise overlooked in the annals photography history.
Among the various charms and functions of photography, this catalog is a quest for photography’s ability to suspend its subject between life and death, thereby enabling the subject to overcome time’s passage—an idea that has some commonality with Japan’s affinity for portraits of deceased ancestors. This catalog introduces the appeal of vernacular photographs with specimens from United States, Europe, Mexico, Australia, and Japan, bringing to light various attitudes toward life and death, conceptions of time, and the significance of portraiture in these different cultures. Also introduced as an important example of the photograph’s function to suspend time is the snapshot that incorporates the photographer’s shadow.
Suspending Time extends Batchen ideas of Forget Me Not, focusing on the connection between photography and time. It also includes two essays by Yoshiaki Kai and Masashi Kohara along with over 100 beautiful plates of cabinet cards, framed daguerreotypes of the 19th century, photography jewelry, tintypes, Japanese ambrotypes, and Mexican sculptures.
Geoffrey Batchen is a professor of the History of Photography and Contemporary Art at the City University of New York Graduate Center. In 2004, he curated the exhibition “Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance,” addressing the connection between memory and photography; this exhibition initiated at the Van Gogh Museum and toured throughout Europe and to the International Center of Photography in New York. The exhibition catalog was chosen as Artforum’s best art book of 2004.
Texts: Geoffrey Batchen, Yoshiaki Kai, Masashi Kohara
Book Design: Takuma Hayashi（Deco design)
99 Plates
Size: 210 × 148 mm
Pages: 256
Hard cover
Bilingual: English/Japanese
Pubulisher: IZU PHOTO MUSEUM/NOHARA
April 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-4-904257-08-1
Price: 3360 yen (tax included)
Geoffrey Batchen SUSPENDING TIME:
Life—Photography—Death 
